Despite significant breakthroughs in the past 20 years, violence against women and girls justified in the name of religion, customs, traditions – in short, culture - remains unabated. Women continue to be persecuted and killed for making choices in life that are perceived to defy social norms. The presentation was created as a tribute to these women, to honour them and their sacrifices. It reasserts the statement made by WLUML and the VNC campaign five years earlier at the 54th session of the CSW.

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Solidarity Network and the Violence is Not our Culture Campaign strongly condemn the revocation of the registration licence of it partner in Sudan, the Salmmah Resource Centre without prior notice and due process.

Three European women went on trial in Tunis on Wednesday for holding a topless anti-Islamic protest, and their French lawyer said he was confident they would escape prison despite the threat of jail sentences.

Pauline Hillier and Marguerite Stern from France, and Josephine Markmann from Germany arrived in court around 0930 GMT wearing the traditional Tunisian headscarf, or safsari.

Angkhana Neelaphaijit, a leading rights advocate for Thai Muslims, has voiced concern over continued sexual assaults against Muslim women by security officials stationed in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.

The widow of abducted lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, who has been providing legal assistance to Muslim suspects in the three southern border provinces, voiced concerns during an address at a press conference by Amnesty International.

Listening to the women in Badam Bagh, it occurred to me that the entire justice system introduced in Afghanistan had become the cattle prod or taser in that story, an instrument of torture delivered perhaps with the best of intentions.

Twelve year old Fatima was sold into marriage to a fifty year old man in 2010. Her father Ali, who was unemployed and addicted to drugs, sold her into marriage for a sum of 40,000 Saudi Riyals (approximately £7,000), which he used to buy himself a car.

Stoning is not simply a relic of the past. In fifteen countries around the world, this brutal punishment and form of torture continues to exist in the here and now.

In 2008, a 16 year old from Iraqi Kurdistan named Aziz eloped with a man against her parents’ wishes. Fearful of her life, she sought help from the Department to End Domestic Violence. Yet the Department turned her over to her father, and her family subsequently stoned her to death.